In the back of a cramped ambulance parked in San Francisco’s Tenderloin in September, a patient who had agreed to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation suddenly changed his mind.
The man had called 911 from home and expressed suicidal ideation. Now, he banged his fist against the medical cabinets beside him, rocking the ambulance from side-to-side on Ellis Street. Then he spewed threats about rape, death and physical assault at the all-female San Francisco Fire Department EMS crew as they prepared to transport him to the hospital on an involuntary mental health hold.
When the patient lunged toward paramedic Anne Sullivan, she and three other EMS workers restrained him on the gurney with straps on his ankles and wrists and a mesh spit hood over his head…